Читать книгу Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale - Blackmore Richard Doddridge - Страница 6

Meanwhile, Esther Cripps, who perhaps could have thrown some light on this strange affair, was very uneasy in her mind. She had not heard, of course, as yet, that Grace Oglander was missing. But she could not get rid of the fright she had felt, and the dread of some dark secret. Her sister-in-law was in such a condition that she must not be told of it; and as for her brother Exodus, it would be worse than useless to speak to him. He had taken it into his head, ever since that business with the "College gent," that his sister was not "right-minded" – that she dreamed things, and imagined things; and that anything she liked to say should be listened to, and thought no more of. And Baker Cripps was one of those men from whose minds no hydraulic power can lift an idea – laid once, laid for ever.

Esther had no one to tell her tale to. She longed to be home at Beckley; but there had been such symptoms with the baker's wife, that a woman, of the largest experience to be found in Oxford, declared that there was another coming. This was not so. But still (as all the women said) it might have been; and where was the man to lay down the law to them that had been through it?

The whole of this was made quite right in the end and everybody satisfied; but it prevented poor Esther from going to the Golden Cross, as she should have done; and the Carrier (having a little tiff with his brother about a sack of meal, as long ago as Michaelmas) left him to bake his own bread, and would rather drive over his dinner than dine with him.

The days of the week are hard to follow, as everybody must have long found out; but still, from Tuesday to Saturday is a considerable time to think of. Master Cripps had two carrying days, two great days of long voyaging. Not that he refrained from coasting here and there about the parish, or up and down a lane or two, on days of briefer enterprise; or refused to take some washings round; for he was not the man to be ashamed of earning sixpence honourably.

But now such weather had set in, that even Cripps, with his active turn and pride in his honest calling, was forced to stay at home and boil the bones the butcher sent him, and nurse his stiff knee, and smoke his pipe, and go no further than his bed of hardy kail, or Dobbin's stable. Except that when the sun went down – if it ever got up, for aught he knew – his social instincts so awoke, that he managed to go to the corner of the lane, where the blacksmith kept the "public-house." This was a most respectable house, frequented very quietly. Master Cripps, from his intercourse with the world, and leading position in Beckley, as well as his pleasant way of letting other people talk, and nodding when their words were wisdom – Cripps had long been accepted as the oracle; and he liked it.

Even there – in his brightest moments, when he smoked his pipe and thought, leaving emptier folk to waste the income of their brain in words, and even when he had been roused up to settle some vast question by a brief emphatic utterance – his satisfaction was now alloyed. Not from any threat of rival wisdom – that was hopeless – but from the universal call for a guiding judgment from him. The whole of Beckley village now was more upset than had been known for thirty years and upward. Ever since Napoleon had been expected to encamp at Carfax, and all the University went into white gaiters against him, there had been no such stir of parochial mind as now was heaving. Cripps could remember the former movement, and how his father had lost wisdom by saying that nothing would come of it – whereas the greatest things came of it; the tailor was bankrupt by making breeches which the Government would not pay for, the publican bought a horse and defied his brewer on the strength of it, and the parish-clerk limped for the rest of his life through the loss of two toes when tipsy – therefore Zacchary Cripps was now determined to hide his opinion.

When the mind is in this uncertain state, it fails of receiving that consideration which it is slowly exerting. If Cripps had stood up, and rashly spoken, he must have carried all before him: whereas now he felt, and was grieved to feel, that shallow fellows were taking his place, by dint of decisive ignorance. This Friday evening, everybody, who had teeth to face the arrowy wind, came into the Dusty Anvil, well laden with enormous rumours.

Phil Hiss, the blacksmith, had a daughter, who served him as a barmaid, Amelia, or Mealy Hiss; a year or two older than Miss Oglander, and in the simple country fashion (setting birth and rank aside) a true ally and favourite. Now, some old woman in Beckley had said, as long ago as yesterday, that she could not believe but what Mealy Hiss, who dressed herself so outrageous, knew a deal more than she dared speak out concerning that wonderful unkid thing about the Squire's daughter. For her part, this old woman was sure that a young man lay at the bottom of it. Them good young ladies that went to the school, and made up soup and such-like, was not a bit better than the rest of us; and if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, pitchforks wouldn't choke them. She would say no more, it was no concern of hers; and everybody knew what she was. But as sure as her copper burst that morning, something would come out ere long; and Mealy would be at the bottom of it!

Miss Amelia Hiss, before she lit her two tallow-candles – which never was allowed to be done till a quart of beer had been called for – knew right well that all her wits must be brought into use that evening. A young man, who had a liking for her, which she was beginning to think about, came in before his time to tell her all that Gammer Gurdon said. Wherefore she put on her new neck-ribbon (believed to have come express from London) and her agate brooch, and other most imposing properties. With the confidence of all these, she drew the ale, and kept her distance.

For an hour or so these tactics answered. Young men, old men, and good women (who came of course for their husbands' sakes), soberly took their little drop of beer, nodded to one another, and said little. Pressure lay on heart and mind; and nature's safety-valve, the tongue, was sat upon by prudence. But this, of course, could not last long. Little jerkings of short questions broke the crust of silence; lips from blowing froth of beer began to relax their grimness; eyelids that had drooped went up, and winks grew into friendly gaze; and everybody began to beg everybody's pardon less. The genial power of good ale, and the presence of old friends, were working on the solid English hearts; and every man was ready for his neighbour to say something.

Hiss, the blacksmith and the landlord, felt that on his heavy shoulders lay the duty of promoting warmth and cordiality. He sat without a coat, as usual, and his woolsey sleeves rolled back displayed the proper might of arm. In one grimy hand he held a pipe, at which he had given the final puff, and in the other a broad-rimmed penny, ready to drop it into the balance of the brass tobacco-box, and open it for a fresh supply. First he glanced at the door, to be sure that his daughter Mealy could not hear; for ever since her mother's death he had stood in some awe of Mealy; and then receiving from Zacchary Cripps a nod of grave encouragement, he fixed his eyes on him through the smoke, and uttered what all were inditing of.

"I call this a very rum start, I do, about poor Squire's daughter."

The public of the public gazed with admiring approval at him. The sentiment was their own, and he had put it well and briefly. In different ways, according to the state and manner of each of them, they let him know that he was right, and might hold on by what he said. Then Master Hiss grew proud of this, and left it for some other body to bear the weight of thinking out. But even before his broad forefinger had quite finished with his pipe, and pressed the crown of fuel flat, a man of no particular wisdom, and without much money, could not check a weak desire to say something striking. His name was Batts, and he kept a shop, and many things in it which he could not sell. Before he spoke, he took precautions to secure an audience, by standing up, and rapping the table with the heel of his half-pint mug. "Hear, hear!" cried some young fellow; and Batts was afraid that he had gone too far.

"Gentlemen," said Grocer Batts, the very same man who had threatened to put his son into the carrying line, "I bows, in course, to superior wisdom, and them as is always to and fro. But every man must think his thoughts, right or wrong, and speak them out, and not be afeared of no one. And my mind is that in this here business, we be all of us going to work the wrong way altogether."

As no one had any sense as yet of having gone to work at all, in this or any other matter, and several men had made up their minds to be thrown out of work on the Saturday night if the bitter weather lasted, this great speech of Grocer Batts created some confusion.

"Let 'un go to work, hisself!" "What do he know about work?" "Altogether wrong! Give me the saw-dust for to clear my throat!" These and stronger exclamations showed poor Batts that it would have been better for trade if he had held his tongue. He hid his discomfiture in his mug, and made believe to drink, although it had ever so long been empty.

But Carrier Cripps had a generous soul. He did not owe so much as a halfpenny piece to Master Batts, neither did he expect to make a single halfpenny out of him – quite the contrary, in fact; and yet he came to his rescue.

"Touching what neighbour Batts have said," he began in his slow and steadfast voice, "it may be neither here nor there; and all of us be liable, in our best of times, to error. But I do believe as he means well, and hath a good deal inside him, and a large family to put up with. He may be right, and all us in the wrong. Time will show, with patience. I have knowed so many things as looked at first unlikely, come true as Gospel in the end, and so many things I were sure of turn out quite contrairy, that whenever a man hath aught to say, I likes to hearken to him. There now, I han't no more to say; and I leave you to make the best of it."

Zacchary rose, for his time was up; he saw that hot words might ensue, and he detested brawling. Moreover, although he did not always keep strict time with his horse and cart, no man among the living could be more punctual to his pillow. With kind "good-nights" from all, he passed, and left the smoky scene behind. As he stopped at the bar to say good-bye, and to pay his score to Amelia, for whom he had a liking, a short, quick, rosy man came in, shaking snow from his boots, and seeming to have lost his way that night. By the light from the bar, the Carrier knew him, and was about to speak to him, but received a sign to hold his tongue, and pass on without notice. Clumsily enough he did as he was bidden, and went forth, puzzled in his homely pate by this new piece of mystery.

For the man who passed him was John Smith, not as yet well-known, but held by all who had experience of him to be the shrewdest man in Oxford. This man quietly went into the sanded parlour, and took his glass, and showed good manners to the company. They set him down as a wayfarer, but a pleasant one, and well to do; and as words began to kindle with the friction of opinions, he listened to all that was said, but did not presume to side with any one.